Certain vehicles (e.g., powered vehicles or vehicle consists) include communication systems that periodically obtain measurements related to the health, operations, or control of the vehicle. For example, locomotives in a rail vehicle consist (“consist” referring to a group of vehicles linked to travel together along a route, including possible coordinated control by one or more wired and/or wireless connections) may include communication systems that periodically receive measurements related to operations of the locomotive, such as speed, horsepower, temperature, brake pressure measurements, and the like. These measurements represent data parameters of the vehicle, and the values of the data parameters may periodically change. For example, measurements of speed of a traction motor may be a first data parameter, measurements of brake pressures may be a second data parameter, and so on.
The values of the data parameters may be requested and used by computerized services or applications running on the vehicle and/or running off-board the vehicle. These services or applications perform various functions based on the data parameters. For example, the services or applications may control tractive operations and/or braking operations of the vehicle, monitor performance of the vehicle over time, record events of the vehicle, and the like. The systems that acquire the data parameters and that are native to the vehicle, such as the systems that are initially installed in the vehicle, may use a communication protocol to form and communicate data messages that include the values of the data parameters. Over time, the owner of the vehicle may desire to install third party services or applications that use a different communication protocol with a different format to communicate data and/or use the data messages that include the data parameters.
The different formats used by the native systems and the third party services or applications may be incompatible. For example, the native systems and third party services or applications may use different proprietary formats. The formats may be incompatible with each other and, as a result, some third party services or applications may be unable to be used with the native systems.
A need exists for a system and method that allows the systems and services or applications using different communication formats to communicate messages with each other.